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Saraswati 

Published by Serpent's Tail

It’s hard to talk about Gurnaik Johal’s debut novel without using the word epic. Saraswati is transcontinental, multi-generational and led by a broad cast of characters - if you’re a fan of fiction on the scale of a book like Martin MacInnes’ In Ascension, then Saraswati is for you.

Beginning with the re-emergence of a supposedly mythical river, Saraswati follows the descendants of a lone couple Sejal and Jugaad, pursuing familial tributaries that run across borders and time. Weaving in themes of climate change, resurgent nationalism and ancient religious texts, it is a novel brimming with images that live long in the memory. Huge crowds mass at river banks, cities flood, mountains beckon and a single piece of cloth links characters around the world. 

More than anything, Saraswati continually returns to  the power of story telling. The stories we tell to understand ourselves, the stories we are told by those in power and the stories we leave for those that follow.

‘A surging, roaring deluge of a novel.’ 

Jon McGregor

‘Immersive, intimate and epic.’ 

Preti Taneja

‘A bold, intriguing tapestry that pulses with frenetic energy.’

Aube Rey

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On June 19th Wendy Erskine’s long awaited debut novel The Benefactors is published. Many of you will already know Wendy from her two acclaimed short story collections Sweet Home and Dance Move and you’ll find The Benefactors filled with the same deep curiosity for people, the same raw laughs and the same unsparing honesty.  

Set, once again, in her much loved Belfast it is a broad and embracing portrait of a community that moves from the sexual assault of one of its central characters ‘Misty,’ to explore the isolating and insulating effects of class and money and the regenerative power of love.

At its heart The Benefactors is a novel that asks us to consider both the unknown and far reaching effects of our actions and the enduring place we hold in each other’s lives.

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On this episode Holly Dawson speaks to us about her debut All of Us Atoms. Faced with the prospect of losing her memory Holly set out to revisit the moments that had shaped her, from the earliest recollections of childhood to her diagnosis. 

What follows is the documenting of a ‘felt’ life. In a series of essays, letters and short stories she weaves together memory, dreams, and reality, grasping hold of the consolations of science and discovering a deep love for the forgettable and forgotten moment. 

At its heart All of Us Atoms is a rejection of the forms and rationalities we are offered for something altogether more satisfying. An archeological dig site, where Holly turns over the soil and sieves it through her fingers to rediscover what’s there, before its lost. 

‘Brilliant, brave, wild and marvellous.’ 

Juliet Nicholson 

‘To read Holly’s writing is to live it.’ 

Helena Bonham Carter

‘I loved this. The smarts, lyricisms, surprises and deep humanity of it all.’ 

Susie Orbach

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On this episode we meet Lucia Lijtmaer to hear all about her upcoming novel Cautery. Published for the first time in English by Charco Press, it is a novel filled with apocalyptic fantasies and a deep mistrust of the supposed greater good. 

Set between modern day Barcelona and puritan New York Cautery follows the stories of two women (one real, the other imagined) who, although separated by 400 years both share a vision of either escaping the confines of society or burning it to the ground. 

It’s a novel that shares some of the same ‘end of days’ terrain as Ali Millar’s Ava Anna Ada as well as the critique of bourgeois, hipster lifestyles found in Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection, as unnerving as it is compelling. 

'A searing, twisted feast.' Laura Fernández

'Masterful,' CLARIN

Get your copy here

https://charcopress.com/bookstore/cautery

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ALL OF THIS UNREAL TIME  

Published by Rough Trade Books 

Hopefully, you're listening to this surrounded by mountains of chocolate. What follows is the second part of our conversation with Max.  If you’ve enjoyed it, follow the link  to get yourself a copy straight from the Rough Trade website. 

https://roughtradebooks.com/products/all-of-this-unreal-time-max-porter-foreword-by-cillian-murphy

As our discussion about All Of This Unreal Time came to an end there were inevitably other things I wanted to ask Max about. Our conversation eventually led to Palfest and the life-changing trip he took to the West Bank last year. But we started with the writing group at HMP Erlestoke and Max’s role as the writer in residence within the prison. 

Mentioned in this episode 

https://pennedup.org.uk/

https://www.palfest.org/

@dillonscrossproject 

One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This - Omar El Akkad 

We Need New Stories - Nesrine Malik

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ALL OF THIS UNREAL TIME 

Published by Rough Trade 

Back this weekend with a double header, we turn to All of This Unreal Time by Mr Max Porter.  Described in the foreword as ‘a gift, written in friendship’ it is an elusive, ever moving torrent of apology, love and gratitude. A response to the countless human and non-human lives that intersect with and impact on our own.

Written during the first, weird summer months of the pandemic, the piece  blossomed into a collaboration commissioned by Manchester Film festival. Directed by Aoife McArdle, it features Max’s friend and long time collaborator Cillian Murphy as Unreal Time’s ‘everyman’ as well as an incredible score by Aaron & Bryce Dessner and Jon Hopkins. 

Part One - available from Friday - Wasteful writing, hardcore forgiveness & confessional booths.

As with all the best Rambles the conversation soon went elsewhere. 

Part Two - Bank Holiday Monday - prison writing groups, embroided life jackets & visiting the West bank with Palfest. 

‘Strange and Beautiful.’  The Guardian 

Books mentioned in conversation 

The Gift - Lewis Hyde 

Essayism - Brian Dillon

On Forgiveness - Richard Holloway 

Is A River Alive? - Robert Macfarlane

We Need New Stories - Nesrine Malik

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On this episode we speak to Naomi Booth about her latest novel Raw Content. Set during a bleak Yorkshire winter, the book follows Grace, a legal editor whose job demands she reduce unspeakable acts to neatly worded clauses. The care and attention with which Grace approaches this work is only matched by her risk taking outside it. When she falls unexpectedly pregnant she attempts the same compartmentalisation, hoping to keep the new, visceral weirdness that her body is undergoing at arms length. But after the gory, psychedelic experience of birth an unravelling begins that Grace is unable to contain. Embodied by the derelict, grim moorland of West Yorkshire, Raw Content heads into the badlands of Grace’s deepest fears, where violent compulsive thoughts threaten to overwhelm and the repressed roars into view demanding with to be dealt with. 

‘Booth knows that too much is asked of too few, in spaces that are too small, and in lives that have too little headroom for care and community.’

Keiran Goddard 

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On this episode, we speak to Anna Whitwham about Soft Tissue Damage, her startling account of a healing found in controlled violence. Published by Rough Trade Books on 27.03 it charts both the loss of Anna’s mother to cancer and her subsequent choice to battle unresolved anger in the boxing ring. From early sparing sessions to the draining seconds of the final round, Anna writes both with immediacy and unflinching honesty. What emerges is an exploration of the pain we choose, the impossible opponent in grief and the strange self-possession that fighting can offer.

It’s a book filled with voices from just the other side of the ropes too. Sparring partners, dance partners, a new partner - a daughter, a coach and a grandfather too. All have a role to play in Soft Tissue Damage. Each, a presence that means in some way Anna never steps into the ring alone.

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On this episode, Ben Markovitz talks to us about his latest novel The Rest of Our Lives. Starting in the midst of a failing relationship, the story follows Tom Layward, a man on the cusp of a life changing decision. Having lived for years in the shadow of a brief affair that his wife Amy pursued, Tom resolves to leave, following their own adult children out into the world. What follows is a road trip of wrong turns and misdirections, across a strangely dislocated and misremembered America as Tom runs both from the narrowing of midlife and his own complicity. Told in a deceptive, first hand delivery, that belies the vital nature of its concerns The Rest of Our Lives is, at its heart, a novel of forgiveness and one that ultimately sides with the enduring nature of love. 

'A deft, agile, razor -sharp portrait of family and midlife crisis ..... A perfect contemporary take on the American road-trip novel.'

Lucy Caldwell 

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On this episode Ellen E. Jones speaks to us about Screen Deep, How Film and TV can Solve Racism and Save the World. Many of you will know Ellen from Radio 4’s Screen Shot, in which, alongside her co-host Mark Kermode, she enters the various worlds of Doris Day, jobbing hitmen and the longest running video shop in the world. 

Screen Deep is written with the same insight, encyclopaedic knowledge and social consciousness that Ellen brings to her broadcasting. (She also does a fantastic line in knowing asides.) It is a reiteration of the power of story telling; both for good and for bad. From the overt racism of early Hollywood to the deft brilliance of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series, Ellen chronicles the struggle for representation, dismantles reconciliation fantasies and questions the invisibility of whiteness. She also argues that Martin Goodman of Friday Night Dinners is in fact the TV dad our times demand.

‘Jones navigates a history of cultural racism assiduously, ranging from The Birth of  a Nation to blackface in sharp, brisk prose.’

Kevin Harley, TOTAL FILM

Screen Deep is published by Faber and is available in your nearest independent book shop. 

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